


One and Two and Three and Four

by JellyDishes



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: F/M, no happy ending, yes romo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:55:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26786305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JellyDishes/pseuds/JellyDishes
Summary: There was no longer any reason to sleep, but Jon still found his mind wandering from time to time when everything grew to be too much. Too long, too heavy, and too too draining in every way a person could be drained.His thoughts traveled, as they often did these days, to Daisy. To one of the last opportunities they'd had to have any sort of time together.
Relationships: Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist/Alice "Daisy" Tonner
Kudos: 6





	One and Two and Three and Four

There was no longer any reason to sleep, but Jon still found his mind wandering from time to time when everything grew to be too much. Too long, too heavy, and too too draining in every way a person could be drained. 

His thoughts traveled, as they often did these days, to Daisy. To one of the last opportunities they'd had to have any sort of time together. 

He thought of her eyes first, sharp and bright and watchful. Catching the light in a way no human’s ever should but that he had started to find comforting in it's own way. Of how she'd gotten thinner than she used to be, trading muscle for a wiry frame held together by scar tissue and force of habit.

Daisy’s hands had been rough and heavy, but for all her uncertainty Daisy touched him with the greatest care. “You ought to be more careful,” she’d told him sternly. Her expression had been hard for him to look at, all shattered edges and expectant grief, so he didn't. 

He should've told her that he loved her, then. That he couldn't forgive her but that she was important to him in the way that few people ever had been. But he hadn't, of course. “So should you,” he'd said instead. He'd motioned his head at the curve where old scars met newly healed skin, angry and puckered and red, red, red. “Care to explain those?”

She'd just looked at him for a moment that had been weighed heavy with too many words left unsaid. Then she’d shrugged, and dropped her eyes down to where her hand was busy smoothing new layers of scar ointment on his hand. “Only if you go, first. Been doing your stretching exercises, Sims?”

His mouth had twisted. No, he hadn't. He hadn't been caring for himself in a lot of ways. He supposed part of that was in spending so much time with a woman who filled him with such an indescribable mix of emotions, new love smearing together with old fear until it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began. Maybe they'd always been impossible to tease apart, because Daisy was herself hard to understand. 

Hard, and all too easy. 

She’d scoffed at him. “About what I thought,” she'd sighed. She’d sat the ointment aside, and lifted his hand, cradled it so gently that he'd forgotten how to speak entirely. He thought of knives and bark driving into him from either side of his neck, but she only started to flex his hand back and forth. She didn't look at him again, not once. He hadn't known if he wanted her to, or if he would fly apart into pieces if she didn't. 

He still didn't know. 

They’d both watched the bend and play of their hands together. Silent, save for the occasional breath hissed through the sieve of Jon’s teeth. His mouth worked, but no words came out. Her breath came faster through her nose until she’d forced it to slow. 

They sat together and they listened to the quiet.

It came hard to him even now. His natural inclination was to fill the silence, or avoid it. It was uncomfortable for him, always had been. He wished that maybe he hadn't been so good at it, this one time. 

That he had looked up at her again and told her that she mattered. That her efforts mattered, even if the ending was the same. That he loved her and how she tried. Her refusal to give in to the fear again, something that he didn't know he had ever been capable of. That he had held her hand back. That he had smiled at her one last time. Instead, he waited and he watched the way he always had. 

Daisy had left the room not long after, his life not long after that. He wanted to fix the image of her eyes in his mind and the way they had made his heart flutter behind his ribs. He wanted to preserve her in this one, endless moment. To give her what peace he could, even if it was only in his memory. 

One and two and three and four, in through the nose and out through the mouth. Focus on the new angles of her cheeks instead of the minute tremble in her breath.  _ ‘Take care of yourself,’ _ she may as well have said, but hadn't.  _ ‘When I can’t.’ _

_ 'Tell me why you do,’  _ he hadn't said back _. ‘Tell me why I matter.’ _

One and two and all of their lives reduced down to moments that could be counted in a lifetime. Every moment they'd spent together weighing only a small fraction of that. The moments they'd touched even less than that, but he knew more than anyone that the sum of human knowledge didn't span the width or the breadth of what was known. 

three and four. 

Take care of yourself, Sims.


End file.
